Ryan Kwanten attends the 2010 GQ Men of The Year Awards at the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia in Ralph Lauren.
GQ gushes like a teenage fangirl:
"For the past few years Kwanten’s been burning up the small screen as the hilarious Jason Stackhouse in True Blood, and in his spare time over the last year he’s managed to squeeze in three films – Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, Griff the Invisible, and Red Hill. And there’s plenty more to come.
Kwanten shares everything with GQ from growing up in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, to breaking into Hollywood and his dislike of sleep. Despite his success Kwanten remains down-to-earth and is still excited by living and working in Hollywood – “Every time I drive down Santa Monica Boulevard, every time I see the Hollywood sign, I’ve been here eight years now and I still have that twinkle.”
ATTENTION MALE STARS: NEVER POSE WITH YOUR HANDS IN YOUR POCKETS. IN FACT, FROM NOW ON --POOF! -- ALL THE TUXEDOS IN THE WORLD HAVE MAGIC POCKETS THAT YOU CAN'T OPEN.
We have done the world a great service today.
He looks cute. We're not in love with the facial hair, which makes him look a little dim, but the hair on top looks great. And we don't particularly love the idea of a red velvet bow tie, but what the hell, he's winning an award, he's young and cute, and it's December. Fine he can have that one.
It's hard enough trying to assess men on the RC, but forget about applying IN or OUT to a tuxedo. There's just too little to pick apart. He looks good, though. Or at least, he would if he didn't shove his hands into his pockets like an 8 year old getting scolded.
Vogue UK December 2010 Issue Editorial: "Star Signs" Photographer: Tim Gutt Model: Siri Tollerod Fashion Editor: Kate Phelan
Pour yourself something dark and warm or tall and cool, whatever floats your boat. Just settle in for your daily pretty. A balm to soothe what ails you. This one's kind of fun. Zodiac themes aren't exactly original, but there's a retro-whimsical feel to this one that sets it part. Enjoy, darlings.
Oh, we think that headline is explanation enough. Press release? You wanna take it from here? We have opinions to form.
“As we open our first Gap stores in Milan and Rome, we’re thrilled to be welcomed by the house of Valentino, with its unique position in Italy’s fashion heritage and to work with Maria Grazia and Pier Paolo, and their modern, fresh take on women’s style.”
“We love mixing different cultures and we have been excited to mix gap’s timeless essentials with our roman culture of Couture. It brings together the iconic world of Valentino and Gap’s fashion staples, synthesizing the current trend of combining luxury with basics,” added Valentino creative directors Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli.
Available in Gap’s flagship stores in Milan and London flagship as well as Colette in Paris and Dover Street Market in London."
With the recent announcement that Karl Lagerfeld will be designing a mini-collection for Macy's for next year and Lanvin's recent highly talked-about collection for H&M, we're definitely in a "fashion for the masses" moment.
But enough of that, let's take a look. Send the girls out!
Okay, the pants are a little on the ridiculous side and the style elements rendered in such a stiff and heavy fabric is causing a not entirely disagreeable disconnect in our minds. But overall, these are pretty and eye-catching and they look, so far as one can tell from pictures, surprisingly well made for this price point. One thing's for sure, it's the most interesting thing coming out of a Gap for a long time.
We had a terrible epiphany last night watching this show. We think the gimmicky theme episodes as well as the occasionally equally as gimmick Very Special Episodes might actually represent when the show is at its strongest. Because last night the writing was pretty tight, the plot moved along, the characters felt recognizable and consistent, and yet, we were pretty bored throughout the whole thing. In retrospect, that was partially because there were no real LOL moments and partially because the musical numbers failed to wow us.
One thing we really liked was the show doing what it occasionally does very well: directly addressing its critics in the dialogue. Emma's criticism of how stale Shu's direction has become is one that many critics of the show have made: Finn and Rachel's endless ballads, followed by a classic rock tune where Mercedes will belt out the final note. Shu being Shu (which is to say, erratic and prone to sudden changes based on a single observation or criticism) he immediately, a week before sectionals, decides to switch out the approach that won them sectional last year for one that immediately puts the team in danger. Honestly, even though it made no sense whatsoever, we were fine with it. This is who Will is, after all. His heart's in the right place but he's something of a mess and he tends to force the glee club to work out his issues for him. In other words, plot-wise it made no sense to bench the heavy-hitters but from a character standpoint, it was dead on.
One other thing we liked was the slight move toward making Kurt and Rachel more friendly with each other. It never gets stated outright (and it probably should because it's odd that it's not stated) but Rachel should have something of an affinity with Kurt and a connection with him based solely on the fact that her parents are a gay couple. And Kurt would naturally have an affinity for the Streisand-esque Broadway Baby, no matter how obnoxious she gets. The gays will forgive a lot of their divas.
And speaking of the gays, we welcomed the very subtly played idea that not only is Dalton Academy not nearly as utopic as we'd been led to believe, but that Blaine is not the perfect specimen that Kurt thought. For one, he's terribly condescending and sounds like a bit of a snob. For another, it's the height of hypocrisy for him to lecture Kurt about being a team player when as far as we can tell, he sings lead all the time and treats the rest of the team like backup singers. In fact, it just occurred to us now, but Blaine might turn out to be a slightly less obnoxious gay male version of Rachel.
We can't hear that song without thinking of appliances. It's been ruined by way too many commercials.
As an aside, we've been getting a little peeved with some of the other Glee reviewers and recappers out there, especially the professional ones, complaining so much about the focus on Kurt this season. For one, his bullying and coming out storylines haven't occupied nearly the screen time that something like, say, Quinn's pregnancy or Will's marital problems did last season. For another, and on behalf of the gays, kindly shut the fuck up. 99.99999999% of all network television programming revolves almost exclusively around straight people and straight relationships. Rushing to be the first to roll your eyes at the bullying storyline and the supposed elevation of Kurt to sainthood only makes you sound like an asshole. It hasn't been handled perfectly - that wedding was a bit over the top - but it's far from the overdone storyline some reviewers are complaining about. Criticize it for how it's being handled, but stop complaining about the focus on it.
Anyway, Schu essentially tosses the playbook, which throws the club into disarray, which only gets worse when Santana tells Rachel about Finn, in front of the whole group. Finn and Rachel as a loving couple is kind of boring (although not nearly as sleep-inducing as Quinn and Sam), so we don't mind where this is going. Again, it feels a bit like a response to some criticisms. Pretty much everyone in the cast openly talks about how unlikable Rachel is now. The fact that PUCK, of all people, turned out to be nicer than her (at least insofar as cheating on Finn goes) really drove home the point that the girl needs to work on her people skills. "You used to be sort of unlikable but now I just feel like punching you every time you open your mouth." Pretty much sums it up.
All of this comes to a head on sectionals day, which is where the show really went into overdrive to depict how much the club has changed in the last year. There were constant references to last year's "Sectionals" episode, most of which did not paint the current status quo in a very good light. They're no longer the scrappy underdogs and they've become complacent and take each other for granted, a meta-commentary if ever there was one.
On the other hand, we guess we're supposed to be wowed by how the team came together for the show:
But we're mostly not. "The Time of My Life" was AWFUL. For one, it's a horrible song, for another, as cute as Sam and Quinn are, they don't have nearly the charisma to keep us interested in them and to be honest, hearing Quinn's sweet but rather thin voice struggling its way through the vocals only highlighted how stupid it was for Schu to bench Rachel.
Santana always delivers, though. And the dancing was fun, courtesy of Mike and Brittany, but these numbers can't hold a candle to the "Don't Rain on my Parade" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want" numbers that won them sectionals this year.
In the end, it was a tie between the Warblers and New Directions. It makes sense from a storytelling perspective. All through the episode, we knew ND was going to win (because what's the point of the show if they're not a competitive show choir?), but considering how ill-prepared they were, it would have felt false and unearned on the part of the writing had they taken first place on their own. Besides, there's obviously a story playing out that will eventually get Kurt back in McKinley High and the Warblers are part of that. They need to be a threat to glee.
Anyway, we didn't hate this episode at all, but it does distress us that the show can do side-splitting comedy, tear-inducing drama, fantastic musical numbers, and provide interesting payoffs for its characters; it just can't do (or rarely does) any of those two things in the same episode. Last night was plot night and it was much needed, but everything else felt like an afterthought.
Okay, we realize the resident straight guy has to keep reminding us that he's straight, but if that's what he thinks a vagina looks like, we're starting to question if he's seen one lately. We're far from experts on that particular bit of anatomy, but the last time we checked, they're not pointy.
We liked the time capsule idea and assigning them all specific years. It's the kind of design-based challenges Project Runway used to do all the time. Sure, it's gimmicky and it has nothing to do with the real world of fashion but so what? It's a game show hosted by a super-villainess.
We also liked the plaid twist. Challenges work best the more the parameters are defined.
We knew he was in trouble the minute he said "No one likes plaid," because honey? Have you seen a runway lately? We're wondering if the teams weren't limited in their fabric choices, because you can find a lot of much nicer plaids than the ones they chose.
Gross.
Part of us feels bad for her because she's so young and in 5 years these scenes are going to be intensely embarrassing for her. On the other hand, she should be embarrassed because the incessant giggling and complete lack of game on her part were irritating as hell. Just go fuck in the bathroom and get it over with.
So congrats to Team Emerald, who finally pulled out a win, and congrats to Jeffrey for ensuring that Cesar didn't win again. We like the guy, but if he's the only thing holding the team together, that would be boring.
Besides, we think Jeffrey deserved the win. Of course it didn't escape our notice that once again the winning garment looked like something Iman would wear. The smart ones are going to figure that out soon. We can't quite see 1989 here, but then again, most of the designers played fast and loose with the year references.
And Rolando, you are OUT of FASHION. Can't really say we disagree. If this is what he envisioned when he was assigned 1969, then he clearly has some work to do in learning fashion history. Like we said, most designers played fast and loose, but this has practically NOTHING to do with the year being referenced.
Seems like a sweet enough kid and he does appear to have some talent, but let's face it, we knew he was going to be one of the early eliminees. Proving that he doesn't have the best understanding of current trends as well as fashion history was a one-two punch that made his elimination kind of expected. It was nice of Dominique to add some drama to the proceedings by pretending her lover was facing a firing squad, but we knew it was time for Ro to go, and the judges did too.
Mondo Guerra rings the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange in recognition of December 1st's World AIDS Day
together with amfAR Ambassadors Cheyenne Jackson, Liza Minnelli, and amfAR Chairman Kenneth Cole in New York City.
How freaking cute does he look? On "stage" with Liza? You are living the dream, bitch.
Even better news, Mondo partnered with Piperlime and designed two exclusive, limited-edition t-shirts. In honor of World AIDS Day Piperlime is donating $20 from the sale of each t-shirt. They are $50 each and there's only around 300 of them. So if you want a piece of Mondo, you better get cracking, girls.
Natalie Portman attends the New York Premiere of "Black Swan" at Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City in a modified Christian Dior gown paired with an Olympia Le Tan clutch.
Christian Dior Resort 2011 Collection Model: Magdalena Frackowiak
We don't blame you, honey. We'd be pissed too.
It's almost hard to conceive of what exactly went wrong here. You've got Natalie Portman in Dior on the red carpet for the premiere of her latest movie. That's practically a no-brainer, and yet she looks like quite the mess here. Whatever route this dress took from the runway design to this much less interesting frock, it was a series of bad ideas all around. We get that due to the title of her movie, it was almost guaranteed she'd show up in black, but this dress in black is pretty boring, especially since it seems to have none of the beading in the bodice that the runway version had.
Worse, it fits her terribly, obliterating the natural proportions of her body and turning her into a thick column. Top it off with the big hair (for her, anyway), heavy makeup and chandelier earrings (none of which really suit her) and she looks less like a starlet at the premiere of her buzz-worthy movie and more like an aging star past her prime, exactly the opposite effect she and her stylist were going for. It's bad, kittens.
Nat, we're intrigued by your new movie and might go to see it this weekend, but we're going to have to give you an OUT.
Is it us or is she wrong more than right on the RC? She has a rep for being one of those stylish stars, but honestly it seems to us she's got way more misses than hits on that front.
Oh, and the purse is cute, but we're thinking it wasn't the right choice with this outfit. It actually draws the attention away from the dress, which is not how you're supposed to do accessories.
Pocket tool.
Ryan Kwanten attends the 2010 GQ Men of The Year Awards
